Blessed Brigid / Candlemas / Imbolc!

Blessed Brigid / Candlemas / Imbolc!

It's still winter, it's still cold and dark, but the days are definitely longer.  In some locales, the sap is starting to rise.  

Brigid is a Triple Goddess of Smithcraft, Healing, and Poetry.  

What creative sap is starting to rise in you?  

2020 Winter Solstice Celebration On-Line

 

You're invited to
the 24th Annual

Winter Solstice Celebration

A Celebration of the Darkness and the Light
with Songs and Stories

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Saturday, 19th December, 2020
On-line
7-9 pm GMT

Europe: 7-9 pm UK; 8-10 pm Central European Time
North America: 2-4 pm Eastern Time; 11 am-1 pm Pacific Time
Everywhere: Click here to confirm time in your location

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A time of quiet reflection in the midst of the hectic festive season

Songs, stories, candle-lighting, silent meditation, singing, and more

All ages welcome

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Registration required

To register, please click here

Sign Up for 2020 Winter Solstice Singing

 

I am going to be hosting a Winter Solstice Celebration (A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual) on-line, on Saturday, 19th December.  

From September through December, I am hosting on-line song-learning sessions / rehearsals for those who would like to learn the songs ahead of time, to sing along during the Celebration.  

Everyone is welcome, regardless of experience singing or ability to read music. There are easier pieces and more challenging pieces -- a little something for everyone.

You do not need to attend these in order to come to the Celebration; likewise, you do not need to come to the Celebration if you come to these.  You are welcome at either and both!

Song-learning sessions will run from Sunday, 6th September through Sunday, 13th December, each week building on the week before.  

We'll cover the sing-along songs, of course, including harmonies, but also the "performance" songs as well. (If you'd like more information on the specific songs, please click here.) 

• Song-learning sessions will run from 6-8 pm UK time, and are open to anyone, regardless of geographic location.  
  

• You can check what time that is for you here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html.   
  

• If you miss a session or the time generally doesn't work for you, there will be rehearsal recordings available.   
  

• You don't need a copy of the book or CD in order to participate, although they're helpful to have.

 

Schedule: 

• Song-learning sessions/rehearsals Sundays, 6th September - 6th December (no session 29th November), 6-8 pm UK time
  

• Complete read-through and sing-through, Sunday, 13th December, 6-8 pm UK time
  
  

• Winter Solstice Celebration, Saturday, 19th December, 7-9 pm UK time 

 

Copies of the book and CD

You do not need to own a copy of this in advance, but the book contains all the sheet music, and the CD contains full recordings of all 15 pieces, as well as teaching tracks for 8 (as well as the full Celebration), so it's very, very useful.

If you live in Europe and would like a copy for £14 + postage, you can get one from me.

If you live in the US and want a copy, the person to contact is my co-author Julie Forest Middleton; I can put you in touch.

 

How do I know without knowing more about the music itself?

The songs are a mix of rounds, well-known songs, spirituals, feminist spirituality chants and Pagan chants, and a couple of choral pieces.

There's detailed information about every song at tinyurl.com/wintersolsticesinging/for-singers.

I'm looking forward to singing with people from a wide range of places in the Northern Hemisphere!

 

Open to people of all genders

Both the choir and the Celebration are open to people of all genders. Transgender, non-binary, agender, and genderqueer people are explicitly welcome.

• The music I have is written mostly in treble clef and is labeled for sopranos and altos, but I've worked with tenors and basses over the last several years, and these pieces adapt well for lower voices as well.

• Anyone can sing any part on any song that works for their voice. You might sing a part labelled one way for one piece, and a part labelled a different way on another. You can also choose to sing all one voice part if that's what works for you. We have lots of flexibility.

 

If you have any other questions, please let me know. 

If you'd like to sign up for the song-learning sessions, please click here:
https://forms.gle/ds2yV9eLfkLFa2ot7

On-line choir starting soon

Hello, all! 

Starting in August, I am hosting on-line song-learning sessions for an on-line Winter Solstice Celebration (a presentation of A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual).

There will be:

* two taster sessions in August;

* regular sessions from September to December that build on each other, leading up to the Celebration on 20th December.

You are invited to participate in the Winter Solstice Celebration whether you sing or not -- but if you'd like to learn the songs in advance, including harmonies, please sign up!

You also do not need to commit to the Celebration to come learn songs. Maybe you just want to come learn songs and sing! (You can also decide later.)

We will meet once a week. I hope to record rehearsals for those who can't join us live and for anyone who wants to go back over the rehearsal during the week; these will be shared privately. There will also be a variety of learning resources available between sessions for your work on your own.

Everyone is welcome, regardless of experience singing or ability to read music. There are easier pieces and more challenging pieces -- a little something for everyone.

== Dates ==

Taster sessions:

Sundays, 9th & 16th August

6-8 pm BST

(7 pm Central European, 1 pm EDT, 10 am PDT)

Regular rehearsals:

Sundays, 6th September-13th December

6-8 pm British Time

(7 pm Central European, 1 pm Eastern North America, 10 am Pacific North America)

Winter Solstice Celebration:

A presentation of A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual

Sunday 20th December

6-8 pm UT/GMT

(7 pm Central European, 1 pm EST, 10 am PST)

== To sign up ==

Message me on Facebook, or email me if you have my email address.

== Copies of the book and CD ==

You do not need to own a copy of this in advance, but the book contains all the sheet music, and the CD contains full recordings of all 15 pieces, as well as teaching tracks for 8 (as well as the full Celebration), so it's very, very useful.

If you live in Europe and want a copy for £14 + postage, you can get one from me.

If you live in the US and want a copy, the person to contact is my co-author Julie Forest Middleton; I can put you in touch.

== How do I know without knowing more about the music itself? ==

The songs are a mix of rounds, well-known songs, spirituals, feminist spirituality chants and Pagan chants, and a couple of choral pieces.

There's detailed information about every song at tinyurl.com/wintersolsticesinging/for-singers. 

I'm looking forward to singing with people from a wide range of places in the Northern Hemisphere! 

== Open to people of all genders ==

EDITED TO ADD, because this has come up a bit with people who don't know me personally, and I'd neglected to say it explicitly: 

Both the choir and the Celebration are open to people of all genders.  Transgender, non-binary, and genderqueer people are explicitly welcome.  

* The music I have is written mostly in treble clef and is labeled for sopranos and altos, but I've worked with tenors and basses over the last several years, and these pieces adapt well for lower voices as well. 

* Anyone can sing any part on any song that works for their voice.  You might sing a part labelled one way for one piece, and a part labelled a different way on another.  You can also choose to sing all one voice part if that's what works for you.  We have lots of flexibility.

Winter Solstice and A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual on The VUU!

On Winter Solstice -- at the moment of the Solstice, too! -- I had the pleasure and privilege of spending an hour in the on-line living room of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship, as a guest on The VUU. It was a lovely experience -- gift after gift during that hour.

Many thanks to everyone involved for our lovely conversation and experiential celebration of the Solstice, and especially to Lori Stone Sirtosky and Rina Jurceka, for much more than I can put into words in this space.

And just a reminder -- you don't have to have a group to do A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual.  You can do it by yourself in your living room, or with a small group of friends, or with 20 people in a friend's living room.   

Blessed Solstice and Happy 2018!

----------------

Watch the video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iuGDm9Yr-c

Watch the video here:




Listen to the podcast/audio:

• https://www.questformeaning.org/vuu-latest/202-solstice-celebrating-dark/#comment-7378

Download podcast here:

• https://media.blubrry.com/clfvuu_latest/s/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu202.mp3

More on A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual:

• tinyurl.com/WinterSolsticeSinging

A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual on Facebook:

• https://www.facebook.com/WinterSolsticeSingingRitual/

Erica Baron's wonderful Yule story, which she read on the program:

• http://www.patheos.com/blogs/naturespath/2016/12/yule-story/

"Deep in the dark..."

Deep in the dark of the longest night
We keep our vigil by candlelight
Waiting to sing to the newborn Sun
The Goddess will birth when the night is done
Raise your voices, sing on high!
Let all the Earth hear your joyful cry!
On this night we sing to Light
And the Goddess of all pleasure and delight
Raise your voices, sing your praise!
O'er all the Earth til the Darkness fades
On this night we sing to Light
And the Goddess of all pleasure and delight!

- (c) Anna Ophidia Alekner, "Winter Solstice Chant"

Blessed Winter Solstice!

Brigid, Candlemas, Imbolc

A good Brigid / Candlemas / Imbolc to you!

Brigid is the triple Goddess of smithcraft, healing, and poetry. What are some ways creativity, healing, or both are weaving themselves through your life?

What are some concrete things you might do to them in?

Composting my tea bag as radical change

I was putting a tea bag into the compost bin on the kitchen counter this afternoon when I was suddenly struck by how much things have changed in 30 years.

In 1985 I was still living with my family of origin in a large East Coast city in the Mid-Atlantic US.  We didn't recycle.  We didn't compost.  The City picked up our trash once a week.  If we raked our leaves into the gutters in front of our house by the fall deadline, the City would pick up our leaves, too -- there was a large truck with huge, flexible tubes like vacuum cleaners.  I have no idea, now, what happened to those leaves -- were they landfilled?  I suspect so.  Perhaps they were shredded and used for mulch for City parks. 

I don't remember what happened to Christmas trees when we were done with them.  Unlike most of our neighbors, who were Orthodox Jews, we did have one every year.  Did we cut them up and put them with the trash?  Was there a special tree collection by the City?  (Would they even come down our block for that -- ?)  Some years, I know, my parents used Christmas tree limbs for mulch.

I remember being frustrated because I knew that recycling existed, but only elsewhere.  I don't think I'd ever heard of composting, except as something hard-core organic gardeners did (we had grown vegetables for many years, but never composted). I didn't know anything about composting as a way to keep things out of landfills or save the planet.

A few years later when I went away to college, I discovered a world where ordinary people recycled.  I was so excited!  It was mostly paper and cardboard.  There were plain old cardboard boxes in the dorms and the brand-spanking new computer center, signs blu-tacked above them on the walls, for white paper, colored paper, and cardboard.  The following year, we had fancier cardboard boxes, pre-printed even; taller, with slotted openings. No longer makeshift; Very Official. 

When I went back to my family's house during breaks, I saw with fresh eyes, disturbed and disappointed.  There was now a recycling center within an easy drive of my family's house, and my family was receptive, so we started collecting our easy recyclables -- at the time, probably only paper and cardboard, and plastic milk jugs -- and making a drive to the recycling center drop-off something like once a month.

I'd had my first paper route when I was 9, and our city still had a newspaper with home delivery well into my teens, which my family still got.  We kept our recycling in our garage, and went to the recycling center when it got too full of recycling for the cars.  I don't remember where the plastic was kept -- right front corner? -- but the newspapers got stacked up against the left-hand wall.  The garage itself was made of two-by-fours, plywood, and shingles; we'd rebuilt it ourselves some time in my late school-age years, and repaired again when I was in high school.  When I was 19 and living with my family again, our garage was firebombed in an anti-Semitic hate crime (along with others in the neighborhood), and it caught and burned very quickly with all that newspaper and dry timber.  We had two beat-up old cars at the time, and thankfully, neither was in the garage that weekday afternoon. 

Not long after that, we got curbside collection of paper and cardboard, but still had to haul plastics like milk jugs and yogurt containers.

I still remember how novel, exciting, and ground-breaking it was to have someplace we could take our recycling to, and then to have collection for just cardboard and paper.

In the early 90s I moved back to my college city, and what the recycling was like depended on which township or part of the City you were in.  But it was still better than where I'd lived before, and I was more passionate than ever about recycling.

It wasn't until the late 90s that I thought seriously about composting.  My best friend and co-Priestess, who lived in an apartment with a balcony, had been doing kitchen composting for a while, and had a worm bin on her balcony; she used her compost on her house plants and balcony garden, and gave it away to friends.  After my ex and I split up, I started gardening, and started a garden compost bin.  It wasn't very successful -- really, I didn't know what I was doing -- but it was a start.

When Beloved Wife and I moved in together, we rented a house with a garden.  With my encouragement, she, an experienced gardener *and* composter, built a wooden three-section compost bin in a sunny back corner.  It was a thing of beauty. 

Sometime in the early aughts, a non-profit partnered with the City to do a kitchen composting training and research project: they offered training at local libraries, supplied people with kitchen compost containers for free (with *strict* guidelines about what could and couldn't be put it the compost -- no meat or dairy products!), and in return asked us to track how many containers we put in our garden compost piles instead of the trash, for a year.  I went to the training, signed up for the program, and started to feel like I had a small clue.  Beloved Wife and I started composting our kitchen waste as well as our garden waste.

In the late aughts, we were living in a large city in the Pacific Northwest when they introduced kitchen compost waste collection.  You just put everything in the same bin as garden waste, which they already collected.  And because the City had a high-temperature cooker, you really could put *everything* in.  If your house or building's bin was big enough, my wife joked, you could put a whole side of beef in there.

It was amazing and liberating.

Now, every housewares store I go into carries kitchen compost caddies. The city where we live collects compostable waste.  Garden waste collection and kitchen waste collection are separate; you put your kitchen compost in a compostable plastic bag, and in our neighborhood, take your bag down to the bin at the end of the street.  The opening's too small to fit a whole side of beef, but still, we put pretty much everything in there.  For garden waste collection, you put your compostable waste directly into your brown bin, and it gets collected curbside.  We also have a compost bin of our own in the back garden. 

We have curbside collection of metal and glass; we take paper, cardboard, many plastics, and other packaging down to the bins at the end of the street, too.  And we recently got glass bins at the corner, as well.   We can take other plastics, batteries, paint, textiles, and a whole host of other things to a City recycling centre. 

At local institutions, from cafes to universities to hospitals to airports, there are separate bins in public spaces for dry recycling, compost, and landfill rubbish/trash. (But not at train stations. *sadface*)

So there I was, this afternoon, putting a tea bag into the compost bin on the kitchen counter, and suddenly thought of how that simple thing *wasn't an option* for me 30 years ago in the place where I lived.  30 years ago, it went into the trash.  I'm glad it doesn't any more. 

This planet is sacred.  This planet is Goddess.  The Earth's air, fire, water, and dirt are my breath, energy, tears, bones and food and drink; they are me; they are my sustenance.  Whether it saves the planet or not, I can't bring myself to landfill that teabag...

...and I'm glad it's so very easy now for me to compost it.

Beltane on Calton Hill with Beltane Fire Society

Note: This is my write-up from 2013.  - sm

I'm a Pagan and I live in Edinburgh: the big question many people are asking me is, "Did you go to Beltane Fire Society??" 

Yes, I did.  Beloved Wife insisted, of all things; I likely would have done the introvert hermit thing, otherwise.  (Big public ritual performance, eek!)  Instead, we went together, and had a blast. 

Yes, it was fabulous, amazing spectacle.  It wasn't the kind of focused ritual work or spiritual work that I would like to be my only celebration of the holiday, but I had a tremendous amount of fun, it was exhilarating, and I'm glad we went.  It was very well-run and well-organized.  We could tell the crowd was a mix of tourists (of both kinds -- spiritual and geographic) and people for whom this was serious business, and everyone was pretty respectful.

(With a few drunken, or just plain thoughtless, exceptions, but I only had to stifle the urge twice to stifle people I found obnoxious.  "This ought to be free.  It's on Calton Hill, so it ought to be free."  (*eyeroll*  Tickets were £8.50 at the door, and much less in advance; and even at the door, that was cheap for how much it costs to put this on, between security, pyrotechnics, police, etc...)  "Yeah, I went through a period where I was into witchcraft and all that, and my girlfriends and I even had this coven, but it's not like it's real religion or anything..."  (I'll spare you the rest of that overheard conversation.))

We didn't get to see a lot of detail, so for that, I'll refer you to BFS' Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beltanefiresociety/.

But, yes, wow, the organization, the attention to detail, the thought that went into everything, the drama, the pageantry, the costuming, the use of massed drumming, torches, fire, pyrotechnics... 

Heh heh heh heh.  Big public dramatic ritual/ritual drama, all right. 

It occurs to me: some of my Cherry Hill colleagues are writing analytical critiques of Burning Man and such from Pagan/ritual theory/ritual studies/theaological perspectives.  I'd love to see such analyses of any of BFS' big public presentations.

A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment

This is just beautiful -- and it calls us to action.

Please read it, and if it resonates for you, regardless of how you label yourself, please sign it.

You can read the whole thing, and sign as an individual and/or for an organization, at
http://www.ecopagan.com/. 

An excerpt:

Many of our ancestors realized what has now been supported by the scientific method and our expanding knowledge of the universe — that Earth’s biosphere may be understood as a single ecosystem and that all life on Earth is interconnected.

The very atoms of which we are composed connect us to the entire universe. Our hydrogen was produced in the Big Bang, and the other atoms essential for life were forged in the scorching furnaces of ancient stars. Beyond atoms, the molecules of life connect us to Earth, showing that we don’t live “on Earth” like some alien visitor, but rather that we are part of Earth, just as a volcano or river is part of Earth and its cycles.

We are earth, with carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus making up our bodies one day, and incorporated into mountains the next. We are air, giving food to the trees and grasses when we exhale, and breathing in their gift of free oxygen with each breath. We are fire, burning the energy of the Sun, captured and given to us by plants. We are water, with the oceans flowing in our veins and the same water that nourished the dinosaurs within our cells.

We are connected to our families, through links of love, to their relatives, and so on to the entire human species. Our family tree goes back further than the rise of humans, including all mammals, all animals, and all life on Earth. The entire Earth is our immense and joyous family reunion.

By NASA/Apollo 17 crew; taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Happy Eostara!

Happy March Equinox! Happy Eostara in the northern hemisphere!

• What are the sunrise and sunset times where you are? 
• How many hours of daylight are there today in your locale?

There are lots of places to look this information up, from the US Naval Observatory (http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/index.php) to TimeAndDate.Com (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunrise.html), and more. 

• What spiritual lessons or reminders does Spring Equinox bring you?  

Other recent astronomical events: 

There was also a solar eclipse today, visible in much of Europe, northern Africa, and northern Asia.  We had brilliant sun mixed with scudding clouds here, but I did get some really cool views using a colander and a piece of white paper taped up to the side of the house.  That was pretty neat! 

Earlier this week, much of the UK saw some gorgeous auroras.  My city was fogged in, so I didn't get to see any, but there are some fabulous pictures at the AuroraWatch UK Flickr pool: https://www.flickr.com/groups/aurorawatch. 

I hope this Equinox brings either Spring or the promise of Spring to all of you in the Northern Hemisphere who have had unusual amounts of cold, snow, or both this winter, and to anyone who is just. ready. for. Spring. 

Happy Eostara! 

Winter Solstice 2014

I have just update the list of communities presenting A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual this year, including:

• Edinburgh, Scotland; 
• Costa Mesa, CA; 
• Indianapolis, IN; 
• Louisville, KY (new this year! w00t!); 
• Pomona/Galloway, NJ; 
• Dallas, TX;
• and hopefully Hamilton, NJ, Gettysburg, PA, Clemson, SC, Spokane, WA, and Madison, WI. (I'm still waiting to hear back from some folks.)

Details at
TinyURL.com/WinterSolsticeSinging/Participating-Communities

If your community is presenting this and you're not listed, please get in touch!

Thank you again to SheWho

Way back in 2002, SheWho feminist women's vocal ensemble recorded the CD for "A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual" for me and my co-author. It was a one-off for them -- not part of their musical life long-term -- but it took a lot of their time and energy. That CD has certainly been part of my life long-term, and as I'm doing a lot of intensive teaching of this music right now, I find myself again grateful for all the time and work those eight women put into our project. There are of course things I'd do differently, mostly thanks to what I learned by doing this CD, but the CD has definitely stood the test of time as a fabulous resource for people learning this music. Thank you again, Karen Escovitz (Otter), Amanda Albright, Anne Cummings, Debra D'Alessandro, Gili Ronen, Hilary Barrett, and Juliet Spitzer.

For more information about SheWho -- or to order their fabulous independent CD, "The Earth Will Turn Over" -- please see:

• http://www.facebook.com/shewhomusic
• http://shewho.org/ 

Queries for Samhain

Friendly Pumpkin, (c) Anders Lagerås, used with permission

Friday is Samhain, the Witches' New Year and the Feast of the Beloved Dead. 

It's the time of year when many of us honor those who have gone before, remember our beloved dead, recognize our not-so-beloved dead and let them go, mourn (and celebrate) endings, welcome new babies, welcome the presence of new people in our lives, and celebrate new beginnings.  

Many Pagans feel that this night, the veil between the worlds, between the living and the dead, the seen and the unseen, is thinnest.  Witches have a saying, "Who is remembered, lives."  In Roses, Too! Tradition, Samhain is a time when we honor our ancestors, physical and spiritual, and cultures which have nurtured us.  

Queries for Samhain:

• How are you marking your endings, your losses, the deaths that have happened this year, the deaths that have happened in the past that are still with you?  
• In what ways do you do to honor your ancestors and those who have gone before? 
• What foods have come to you from them?  What ordinary, everyday things?  What special-occasion things?
• What gifts from those who have gone before do you pass down or share in the world?  
• How are you welcoming new babies and new people who have come into the world or your life this last year?  

May your Samhain be blessed. 

May these next weeks between the Feast of the Beloved Dead and the Rebirth of the Sun at Yule be a time of rich darkness for you. 

Winter Solstice 2014?

I am looking for people anywhere in the world who would be interested in doing a Winter Solstice Celebration based on A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual, privately with a small group of friends / family. Think, getting together in someone's living room, using the CD or an iPod for the music, and sharing the reading. Five is a good minimum number, though I've done it with fewer -- you can do it by yourself -- and as far as I know there is no maximum number. Support and encouragement available from me.

Let me know if you're interested!

More information is available at TinyURL.com/WinterSolsticeSinging.

There's also a Facebook group for people who are involved in this project at http://www.facebook.com/groups/AWSSR/.

Labyrinth pictures!

I realized I hadn't posted pictures of any of the labyrinths I'd built!

Enjoy!

2013 Gathering labyrinth

Click here for more pictures from the first labyrinth, at FGC Gathering 2013 in Colorado.

2104 Gathering labyrinth

Click here for more pictures from the labyrinth this last summer at FGC Gathering 2014 in Pennsylvania.

2014 Fall Equinox labyrinth

Click here for more pictures from the labyrinth we built for the Roses, Too! Tradition Fall Equinox ritual here in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Please see my past posts about labyrinths for the back story of how I came to build these labyrinths, and also for how-to help if you'd like to build a temporary labyrinth yourself:
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/labyrinths

Thanking the Goddess for tea

Yesterday, I posted to Facebook:  "TEA. Thank You, Goddess."

Today, while making my tea, it occurred to me to ask myself: Can I thank the Goddess for tea when I don't believe in the Goddess? 

I have said many times that I don't believe in the Goddess; I experience the Goddess.  And I do. 

I live on this planet, so I experience the Goddess -- the Air, Fire, Water, and Earth that are Her breath, energy, blood, and body.  That are literally and metaphorically these things. 

Air, Fire, Water, Earth in my everyday experience:  I breathe air.  I listen for the wind in the trees, down our chimney, against the walls of our house, against the sides of the bus.  I feel the wind against my face, against my body, as I walk; it blows my hair in my face these days.  I love sunny days; I depend on sunlight even on cloudy days, for the food I eat, for my mental health, for vitamin D, for so much else.  I revel in how our cats luxuriate in the sun shining through our living room windows.  I love how our back patio is a little sun-trap.  My neurons fire, a near-infinite number of tiny points of tremendous energy.  I love the moon.  I drink water.  I drink TEA.  I am, myself, more than half water.  My blood pumps.  Making my tea, I had a clumsy moment which reminded me that I definitely experience gravity, and if that's not an Earth power, what is.  I have a body.  I walk on the ground.  There are trees in our communal back garden, and flowers, shrubs, and other plants in both front and back gardens, and so many of our neighbors' gardens.  I can walk down to the end of the block I live on, look east, and see Arthur's Seat, one of the "mountains" in town.  Another few steps, and I can see Salisbury Crags.  I can go climb them.  I can walk across the green at the end of my block.  I can go sit on our back patio and listen to the birds and the wind in the trees, and feel the sunlight on my face. 

These days, I feel very estranged from that fifth element, that something more, the Spirit which binds all the elements, all life, together. 

But I can experience the Air, Fire, Water, and Earth in the everyday. 

I can thank the Air, Fire, Water, and Earth -- including humans -- responsible for my tea. 

Thank You, Goddess.

Queries, and happy Spring Equinox!

Happy Spring Equinox! 

Today we focus on breaking the bonds of Winter and emerging into Spring. 

• From which bonds are you freeing yourself?  
• Who can you call on to help you?  
• What, or who, meets you when you emerge?

Brigid Poetry Festival: IMBOLC

Snow on trees and birdbath.  (c) 2014 Mari Elm

A belated post for the 2014 Brigid Poetry Festival.  - sm

IMBOLC

Stillness.
Once-sleeping seeds
Nourished
Under a blanket of snow
And hard, cold Earth
Now stir,
Sending tendrils yet unseen
Of fragile life
Upward, outward.
The Sun grows longer, stronger,
Fueling, coaxing
Potential withal warm light.
The Cycle begins again
And we rejoice,
Bless-ed.

(C) Rev. Mari Elm
February 2014
reprinted with permission

What shall I tell you about Winter Solstice?

Shall I tell you about the holiness of every day, of the sacredness of each of the four seasons? Shall I tell you about how tracking the seasons helps me understand, in a deeply...  Read more